windows media player/backup problem

hi, I've ripped my cds on to windows player. to access I have a shortcut [blue square with orange and white triangle ] it opens up showing the album covers and names, I right click and can either play or view the songs, everything working fine. My wife suggested I back up them up on to an external hard drive, which I have. Now if I disconnect that hard drive, when I access ' my ' music on w.m.p. the albums are all blue, when I right click to play or view content a message appears, w.m.p. cannot find file......the item might point to a file that has been moved or deleted e.t.c. . I thought an external hard drive was to back up data and to leave original data on the computer, however it seems that I cannot use w.m.p. as I used to unless the external drive is plugged in,any advice on how to solve this problem would be appreciated, thanks

You will have to make sure that you have backed them up (copied not moved) They should be in C\:Documents and Settings\yourNameHere\My Documents\My Music (that's for XP)

First have a look in WMP | Tools | Library, tab | and in the section 'Update library by monitoring folders' click on the button for 'Monitor Folders' to see which drive and where WMP is gathering it's information from to display in the Library Index.

(extra note, make sure there is NOT a tick in 'Delete files from computer when deleted from library')

its a windows 7 home premium computer not an xp lotvic,they are in c drive,but listed and not as described in first thread. In wmp lbrary tab there is no update library by monitoring folders, I have got a box that lists music, recorded tv, pictures etc, In wmp under the organise tab [music ] a box with music library locations opens and change how this library gathers its contents [ 1 my music c/users/my name , default save location unresponsive [2] public music c/music/public unresponsive ''this folder is empty '' and [3] j/music unresponsive . this jmusic is my external hard drive. I'm really struggling to find info. that might help yourself or others, no tech. knowledge within me . It's going to be hard work to solve this me thinks, but thank you for showing an interest

I believe I have to close this thread, whilst gathering info. for my last reply I have found that many albums in hardrive c have only 1 or 4 songs on them whera's in the external drive they are complete. How this has occured I have no idea, but many thanks to those who viewed and replied.

Can you browse (navigate) to C:\Users[YOUR_USERNAME]\Music and see if your music files are still there. I have a feeling you may have moved the files instead of copying. Or you have moved the default folder along with the files to j drive.